My Little Pony does not have interesting mythology. The fact is, the vast majority of its world and backstory are either heavily based on other stories or designed to fulfill a specific role. That doesn't need to be the case, but this is a children's program where most worldbuilding is made up during the scripting phase rather than taken from any grander vision, so the easiest route is simply transplanting ponies onto familiar stories from human mythology, or taking creatures from other fantasy stories and building a rudimentary, sometimes overly simplistic society around them.

With "Campfire Tales," the show seems interested in finally adding some weight to its mythos, and yet it falls into all the same traps. There are three stories in this episode, but all three are simple moral lessons which transplant human cultures onto Equestria without exploring them in much detail. Add in a framing story which tries to tie that to the actual main characters of the show, and you have an episode which can't do justice to either Equestria's past or present. It's still nice to see a diverse range of environments, and there's moments of charm and tension here and there, but it's not enough to make the episode particularly exciting.



When Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash go camping with their sisters (and Scootaloo), their plans are ruined by an attack from a swarm of aggressive bugs known as "Flyders," who drive them away from their campsite and into a cave. While there, they set up a fire and try to make the best of their situation by sharing their favourite legends.

The first legend, shared by Applejack, tells of an earth pony named Rock Hoof from the guard village of Mighty Helm, who everyone said was too scrawny and weak to protect the village. When a volcano erupts, he starts building a trench to stop the lava, and spontaneously transforms into a stronger pony, rapidly expanding his trench to the river so the lava can flow harmlessly away from the village.

Of the three legends, this has the least clarity, and its apparent message of perservering beyond what's expected of you is clouded by the fact that Rock Hoof could have been seriously hurt by the lava had he not transformed, and that transformation adds a mystical element which is somewhat hard to apply to the laws of magic in Equestria, let alone real life. Furthermore, Rock Hoof's story is by far the simplest of the lot, featuring the least buildup, the least detail, and the least context, and while that's not entirely unrealistic to real-life legends, it also prevents the story from having much of an identity.

Unfortunately, this is also a major issue with the other two stories. The second is shared by Rarity, and involves a unicorn named Mistmane whose friend, Sable Spirit, is the empress of an unnamed state. Mistmane discovers that Sable is overworking her subjects, and surprised that her old friend has turned so cruel, confronts her in the palace.

Despite being the most intricate of the three legends, the Mistmane story still relies heavily on simplistic characterization in service of a simplistic theme. Sable's oppressive rule is explained through a longstanding jealousy of Mistmane's beauty, which led the future empress to cast a failed beauty spell on herself, making her old and ugly, and leading her to want a palace with the beauty she could not have. Without knowing more about Sable, this just makes her seem shallow, and as a consequence, Mistmane's decision to restore her appearance in the end lacks weight.

This second legend contains the strongest moral of the three, but it's still not especially clear. What comes across is that jealousy and obsession with physical appearances will eventually lead to cruelty, but Sable is such an extreme and uncomplicated example that this moral comes across as little more than generic children's show fluff - not without merit, but offering relatively little substance for anyone older than the target audience.

Much of the problem is with how these legends are presented. They don't function as regular works of fiction, as they're only a couple minutes long and lack detail or nuanced characters, but they don't have the ethnographic appeal of fictional mythology either. The Mighty Helm story takes place in a Nordic society, while the Mistmane one has a Japanese aesthetic, but both of these cultures are entirely new to the show, and these legends provide very little detail about them. We don't know exactly where any of these tales take place, we don't know what their cultures are called, and we don't know if the societies they come from even still exist. Somehow, we know less about the world of Equestria than when we started.

With that said, it is nice to see new environments. The town of Mighty Helm is at least named, and neither it nor the setting of the Mistmane story look like anything we've seen in the past. Rainbow's later story takes place in the Dragon Lands, but while we've seen that before, it's still one of the show's more visually distinctive locations, and it's never looked better. Unfortunately, all three of the cultures depicted are directly analogous to real-world cultures, and without any additional detail of where they fit into Equestria, they still come across as uninspired even in spite of how distinct they are from the rest of the show. Rather than unique worldbuilding which sets Equestria apart, we get familiar sights plastered directly from the real world which look like any number of other shows.

Thankfully, while Rainbow's story has all the same problems, it at least boasts some decent action. This legend revolves around Flash Magnus, a lowly cadet in an unnamed kingdom's Royal Legion who is flying over the dragon lands with his squad to meet their comrades. Along the way, they're attacked by the dragons, and several Legionnaires are captured. In order to rescue his comrades, Flash volunteers to lure the dragon away, and is given a fireproof shield to help. Once the rescue has succeeded, he lures the dragons into a thundercloud, where get zapped a few times and then retreat. Flash's bravery is praised by his comrades, and his commander lets him keep the shield.

As said, this third story has all the same problems: almost no cultural detail, two-dimensional characters, and a simple moral. In this case, the moral is about the merit of bravery and putting yourself in danger to help others - again, fine enough, but not too compelling. However, it also contains significantly more action than the other two, and adding the stakes of Flash's captured comrades helps give the story at least a little weight. More importantly, the scene of Flash flying away from the dragons while defending himself from their fire is fast-paced and genuinely thrilling, which gives this story some of the energy which the other two were sorely lacking, and the final twist of Flash leading the dragons into a thundercloud is easily the most clever plot point in the entire episode.

That action is significant, because these legends are played entirely straight, with very little humour to offer. The Mistmane story also has a visually distinctive action scene, but it's played with particular seriousness, as is the rest of that story. The only note of humour across all three is Flash Magnus emerging from the thundercloud charred and frazzled, providing a little levity after a genuinely intense chase sequence. Otherwise, these stories are entirely po-faced, and they're neither complex nor creative enough to justify that.

Instead, the episode's attempts at humour are found in the framing story, which features light banter between the Crusaders and their sisters as well as a few weak visual gags. Frankly, only one of these lands: in one digression from the Mistmane story, Sweetie Belle says she too would be surprised if one of her friends turned evil, to which Apple Bloom retorts that she "knows how they get when they miss breakfast." That lands, but otherwise the the episode relies heavily on limp callbacks to "Sleepless in Ponyville" and caricatured depictions of Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. It even throws in a grotesque facial expression or two.

To be fair to Dash, she gets a few pleasant moments which emphasize her relationship with Scootaloo, but most of her dialogue consists simply of her declaring her own awesomeness. It's not just that she acts confidently and recklessly - she does that, but it's mostly fine, excepting a few boneheaded encounters with the flyders. It's that not a single scene can pass without her at least once stating how awesome she is. Even if we accept that she'd still boast constantly in season 7, it's just annoying to have the same joke repeated ad nauseam, and you'd think Rainbow would tone it down out of some respect for her friends.

Scootaloo is even worse, though. Her nervousness from "Sleepless in Ponyville" has ballooned into her being the scaredy-cat of the group, which completely misses the point of the earlier episode. In "Sleepless," she was just as scared as Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, but felt the need to hide it in order to impress Rainbow Dash. Here, she's afraid of everything, whereas Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom are completely fine for the most part. This is a completely new character trait which we have never seen before, and there's no other punchlines to save her scenes from falling flat.

This framing story is also very strained and predictable. Of course something goes wrong right when they set up camp. Of course the ponies need to make the best of what they have. Of course they lock themselves in, then find a way out as soon as they start looking. And of course the CMC declare that they had a great time despite all the setbacks. It's just so stale and predictable, and the lesson has already been done as far back as season 1's brilliant "The Best Night Ever." Even the legends seem to echo that main lesson, though it's faint enough that it could just be a coincidence.

Still, there's some charm to be found in the framing story, mainly in the relationships between the CMC and their sisters. Apple Bloom is visibly enthusiastic about Applejack's story, Rarity and Sweetie Belle display some affection, and Rainbow Dash at one point comforts Scootaloo when the latter is scared. It's mainly that general sense of sweetness which keeps the framing story afloat, but that's only barely enough to keep it from being a total wash.

Mostly, it's the environments and the Flash Magnus story which keep "Campfire Tales" afloat. It's just pretty enough, just charming enough, eventually just exciting enough to not be boring, but there's not much here to be excited by either. Poor humour, derivative storytelling, and weak world building hold the episode back. The latter two are par for the course, but the former is what's really disappointing. This show doesn't have an interesting enough world to sustain an entire 22 minute episode, but with enough solid humour, it could have still provided a little bit more detail to Equestria without feeling so flimsy. Alas, it was not to be.

Score:
Entertainment: 6/10
Characters: 4/10
Themes: 6/10
Story: 5/10
Overall: 53/100